Today I talk with Professor Keane about his book The Life and Death of Democracy and in particular the concept of ‘monitory democracy’ which he develops in this book based on over 10 years empirical research into the history and practices of democracy.

Thank you for joining me today. In next week’s episode you’ll be hearing from a range of my guests, answering the question ‘if you could change one thing about democracy what would it be?’ I hope you’ll join me then.

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This paper studies the user experience of the experts who are invited to participate in the EIP surveys. The EIP questionnaire already includes a question about the difficulty of the questions . Although the distribution of the collected responses is encouraging, we have to deal with two problems: i) this distribution is based on the users who have completed the questionnaire (i.e. we do not know the responses of the experts who have dropped out of the survey before answering to this question) and ii) when experts answer that they have faced difficulties, we do not know which questions were difficult for them. To build a deeper understanding about the EIP questionnaire, this paper uses web survey paradata: User agent is used to identify experts responding to the survey using a smartphone. Item response times and drop-out points are used to identify the most difficult questions. The paper concludes with an overall evaluation of the EIP questionnaire and suggestions to improve the user experience for the EIP survey respondents.

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Join us for the launch of the latest Lowy Institute Paper published by Penguin Random House, Remaking the Middle East: How a Troubled Region May Save Itself, by Anthony Bubalo.
The Middle

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Join us for the launch of the latest Lowy Institute Paper published by Penguin Random House, Remaking the Middle East: How a Troubled Region May Save Itself, by Anthony Bubalo.

The Middle East is experiencing a period of concentrated turmoil unlike anything since the end of the Second World War. Uprisings, coups, and wars have seen governments overthrown, hundreds of thousands killed, and millions displaced.

Anthony Bubalo argues that the current tumult is the result of the irrevocable decay of the nizam – the system under which most states in the region are ruled. But amid the ferment there are also “green shoots” of change which could remake the Middle East in ways that are more inclusive, more democratic, less corrupt, and less violent.

Anthony Bubalo has worked on the Middle East for more than 25 years as a diplomat, intelligence analyst, and researcher. He has lived in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. He led the Lowy Institute’s Middle East research for 14 years, and regularly comments on the region’s politics in the Australian and international media.

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Abstract
Exile is most often associated with situations of banishment and diasporic communities. The concept has also been deployed metaphorically to signal large-scale social processes of ontological disembedding and associated paradoxical

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Abstract

Exile is most often associated with situations of banishment and diasporic communities. The concept has also been deployed metaphorically to signal large-scale social processes of ontological disembedding and associated paradoxical workings at the level of subjectivity. Under contemporary conditions experiences of exile acquire new ambiguities and intensities. Physical separation often cleaves apart from other possible modes of interaction. Related destabilisations in place-based relationships give rise to intensified memory work and newly reflexive subjectivities. Close attention to one Central Australian Aboriginal woman’s situation provides an intimate perspective from which to observe the conjunction of social forces at work in contemporary processes of displacement. Single-person focused ethnography conveys the gruelling experience of navigating exile and the imagined possible selves and lives this condition generates, offers and ultimately withholds.

About the speaker

Melinda Hinkson is an associate professor of anthropology and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. Much of her work is pursued at the interface between anthropology and visual cultural studies. She has published widely on Warlpiri media production and mediated relations, on the work of Australian anthropologist WEH Stanner, and on the contested cultural politics of the Northern Territory Intervention. Melinda’s 2014 book Remembering the Future: Warlpiri Life through the Prism of Drawing was accompanied by an exhibition she curated for the National Museum of Australia. Her current work focuses on the governance of Indigenous difference and on transformations in Warlpiri relations to place.